Educator • Author • Ecologist
The Iaqua Oak is an old one—a living expression of time in the Humboldt County hills, just inland from a coast defined by towering redwoods.
Continue reading “The Iaqua Oak and the Future of Old Trees”
There is a quiet confession from me for the Field Guide to Manzanitas: I did not set out to make it because I was an expert. I made it because I wasn’t.
Years ago, while wandering through California’s chaparral and woodlands in pursuit of conifers, I began to notice how little I understood about the understory beneath them. I admired the polished red limbs of manzanitas and could recognize the genus on sight, but naming a plant to species was usually beyond me. The subtleties—leaf, inflorescence, burl structure, glandular hairs, habitat nuance.
So I did what I do when faced with a botanical or ecological mystery: I made a book.
Continue reading “Manzanitas of Fort Ord: Creating the Field Guide I Needed”
Release from Backcountry Press
Kneeland, CA — Backcountry Press is honored to announce that California Trees: A Field Guide to the Native Species, co-authored by botanist Matt Ritter and ecologist Michael Kauffmann, has been awarded the 2025 National Outdoor Book Award (NOBA) in the Nature Guides category. This prestigious recognition celebrates excellence in outdoor writing and publishing—and affirms the enduring importance of California’s native tree flora.
Selected by NOBA for its clarity, scientific rigor, and exceptional design, California Trees offers a vibrant, accessible guide to all 95 native tree species found across the state. Through full-color photographs, detailed range maps, and clear botanical descriptions, the book illuminates the intricate stories of the trees that shape California’s landscapes—from coast redwoods brushed by Pacific fog to the whitebark pines standing resilient on alpine ridges.
Continue reading “California Trees Wins National Outdoor Book Award”
In recent weeks, I had the chance to stand before a full room and share my passion for trees. Their quiet strength, existence across deep time, and role as living elders shape us all–though most don’t know it. What follows grew from that talk—a weaving of science and story, a call to remember what trees have always known: that we belong to the living Earth and to one another.
We are living through turbulent times. The world feels splintered, yet beneath our feet the forest still holds fast—roots touching roots, sharing, and trying to endure despite us. I believe we all need to come together around nature and stewardship and this is one way I see it happening: by walking among trees, listening, and letting them teach us how to love this place again.
You can watch the full presentation at the end of this post. May it invite you, too, to find hope in trees.
Down below, the world feels louder: division, anger, disconnection, and the weight of relentless news cycles pressing like smoke. It is easy to feel small and powerless.
But the late Barry Lopez, beloved nature writer and cultural guide, offers another way. In his essay Love in a Time of Terror, he urges us to respond to hatred not with more power, but with love — fierce, rooted, enduring love for the Earth and for each other.
“ In this moment, is it still possible to face the gathering darkness, and say to the physical Earth, and to all its creatures, including ourselves, fiercely and without embarrassment, I love you, and to embrace fearlessly the burning world?”
— Barry Lopez
What if trees could show us how to love in this fractured time?
Whistler, British Columbia is famed for its mountains, but just as magnificent are the ancient forests draped across their flanks—wet, wild, and woven with a diversity of conifers that whisper of deep time. Tucked in the southern Coast Mountains, the forests surrounding Whistler are shaped by a cool maritime climate, abundant precipitation, and a legacy of glaciation that has carved basins, ridges, and deep alluvial valleys. These physical forces, coupled with nutrient-rich colluvial and glacial soils, give rise to complex plant communities where conifers reign.
Continue reading “Conifer Forests of Whistler, BC”